Battle of Manuecc
Also known as The Great Flight and Chicvat's Folly, the Battle of Manuecc was the second major battle of what would become the Aqsi Rebellion and would remain a point of contention among Turavid historians well into the post-imperial age. Fought throughout the Manuecc system - a relatively substantial covert industrial colony of the DHT, the Turavid loyalists entered the system early on 13-12 11 following the abrupt and highly successful uprising of the planet's Aqsi colony. Seeking to destroy or re-subjugate the planet's Aqsi population and restart production as quickly as possible in the primary colony's orbital shipyards, the Turavids would ultimately be forced to abandon the system despite the destruction or flight of all Aqsi and Aqsi sympathizers in the system on account of an inability for the DHT to reinvest resources in replacing the system's infrastructure in light of the extensive damage sustained throughout the battle. Prelude Though relatively young, the DHT subject Aqsi population on Manuecc had been aggressively cultivated in order to work a series of shipyards intended to construct various Impetuous and Indomitable Class heavy cruiser and cruiser ships. As a result, the population had risen to 1.4 billion motileforms in the span of two decades and was overseen by an orbital station with an attached patrol of one Indomitable Class cruiser with its two Lancer corvettes. Following the uprising and subsequent slaughter at Dumec, Aqsi populations throughout the empire began entering periods of intense violence towards their Turavid masters which would ultimately culminate in a coherent rebellion in the Second Dumec Uprising on 11-2 11. In large part due to the growing wave of fear of a mass uprising and a resulting crippling of imperial industry, the Marches stationed at Tacca were directly instructed to deploy a far larger force than necessary to point down their sept's first Aqsi uprising by T'Ajvarac II. Setting the stage Determining to engage its masters on 13-9 11, the Aqsi and its sympathizers rapidly seized control of the primary colony's surface and orbital stations and by 13-10 had assumed full control of the system in large part due to the loyalist garrison's failure to predict a sympathizer element aiding the Aqsi. There was however a pre-understood limit to the uprising - the Aqsi and its sympathizers stood virtually no chance of holding the system in the face of the DHT given their relative isolation and having taken control of only two fully functional primary vessels, the Indomitable class cruiser Ni-Vicc and the Lancer class corvette Hra-Ca Macc along with a relatively sizable contingent of snubfighters and freighthaulers. Determining escape was the best path forward for itself, the Aqsi colony set to work at once with refitting the system's freighthaulers to serve as transports, going so far as to scavenge warpdrives from incomplete heavy cruisers to warp-enable its ramshackle fleet. Further, it crashed several of the planet's orbital stations into its moons and the planet's surface itself in what would become one of the first acts of recognizable intentional strategy attempted by the gestalt. The battle Despite its best efforts, the Aqsi forces were incapable of preparing sufficient transports to even begin a proper evacuation of the planet before the original garrison's distress call was answered by the fleet of Nihanaic Chicvat IV - a compound arrangement of one heavy cruiser, one cruiser, a frigate, and two corvettes along with the Cohort of T'cca squadron with its newly developed Tiac-93 fighters. Facing near-certain defeat, the Aqsi redeployed its allied assets to perform a stalling motion to guarantee at least some portion of the colony and their captured assets survived. Opening engagement Warping in above the system's disk and more importantly just above the primary colony, Chicvat IV's force initially mistook the Ni-Vicc for having remained a friendly vessel as it continued to distantly orbit the primary planet's uninhabited moon while issuing a localized distress signal. Distrustful but having little to go on, Chicvat IV quickly issue the command to deploy T'cca's snubfighter cohort in small investigative formations that'd start with the Ni-Vicc and engaged the rest of his fleet in a loose antipolar orbit with the traitor vessel. This was however, exactly what the Aqsi and its sympathizers desired, with the Ni-Vicc able to employ its point defense and reactors ejected from the orbital station serving as improvised super explosives on the moon's surface to great effect against the tentative piecemeal advance of the fighters despite taking not insubstantial damage from several of the missiles deployed by the unknown to it Tiac-93's. Forced to withdraw, the Cohort took further losses from fighters that'd been kept in waiting on the moon's surface. Followthrough Witnessing the embarrassing forced withdrawal of the Cohort in what would later be known as one of the worst Cohort defeats in the Imperial Era, Chicvat IV elected to push his fleet into a direct engagement with the now-apparent traitor force and handily destroyed the Ni-Vicc and most of its fighter escort despite spirited defense and a near-evasion in the planet's atmosphere. Poised to issue an ultimatum to the colony's surface, the fleet was lured by a salvo fired by the Hra-Ca Macc and an unwillingness to repeat their previous mistake. Facing further bombardment by planetary and lunar guns, a lucky hit by the crashed orbital station's main gun - one of only three its pre-charged capacitors would allow - saw the unthinkable destruction of the Hra'Canca and death of Chicvat IV. In momentary disarray, the fleet split to engage the entrenched guns and the Hra-Ca Macc. Finding the lunar stations in the midst of an evacuation, the fleeing sympathizers took heavy losses from the Ni-Hr'Tuan and a contingent of the fighter cohort while the remainder of the fleet chased the Hra-Ca Macc throughout the system's asteroid belt and mining stations while exchanging insubstantial fire only for it to warp away as it cleared the system's disk. Close Out of means to stall the advance of the DHT fleet and having had little in the way of time to further evacuate, the Aqsi detonated many of the fusion cores that had powered the planet's infrastructure both on the surface and in orbit, creating a debris field that would likely inhibit safe near-orbit of the planet for decades following the conflict and annihilating any remaining sympathizers and Aqsi forces in the system as the last of the freighthaulers warped free and the battle drew to a close with the token bombardment of the planet's surface. Aftermath Faced with staggeringly disproportional losses given the number of enemy units and the loss of a Nihanaic to alien forces, there was a brief but highly contentious period of debate in the Court at Tur over how best to loose the news upon the public as reports trickled in. Opting on mixed disclosure, it was only after the Fall of Tur that the battle's place in history was properly understood by historians - The DHT had in many ways lost. Rather than sacrifice a colony to defeat an enemy, a colony had been denied them - one of only a handful of such events in their history. The Aqsi, previously a largely incoherent and compliant gestalt had engaged in a level of planning and strategy that undid an elite force of the empire and was greatly emboldened by its pseudo-victory despite enormous casualties. Though having lost a mere four percent of its total strength and having little to do with command of the operation, the March most Loyal in Tarcca would see itself disgraced and slowly drawn down before being made subsidiary to the March Most Pious and Loyal in Tarcca before they too were eventually annulled and their assets reverted to direct control by the Court at Tur. Meanwhile, the surviving elements of the Aqsi colony at Manuecc would in time become the Type 2-9.4, a behemoth deep space colony and dreadnought of the later Aqsi navy replete with descendants of its surviving sympathizers.